Prosecutors will retry a West Valley man accused of trying to have sex with a girl he met through a phone call in April.
A 3rd District jury could not decide last month whether Richard Simon Garcia, 29, intended to have sex with a 14-year-old girl in April and Judge Judith Atherton declared a hung jury on that charge.Friday, prosecutors set a new trial date for Feb. 9 to retry Garcia on one count of attempted unlawful sexual intercourse, a class A misdemeanor.
The original jury, however, convicted Garcia of attempting to contribute to the delinquency of a minor, a class B misdemeanor, for trying to impersonate the girl's father to check her out of school. On that count, Atherton could order Garcia to spend up to six months in jail. Sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 21.
During the trial, a 15-year-old girl testified that on April 20 she answered a pay phone at a Holiday Oil convenience store and the caller asked her if she wanted to have sex with him. She responded she was not sure if she would, but gave him her home phone number.
That night, the man, who identified himself as Richard, called the girl and asked her sexually explicit questions, she testified. Four days later, the man called her and said he would check her out of school so they could have sex, the girl said.
That afternoon, the man repeatedly called the school secretary and, posing as the girl's father, tried to get her checked out of school. The girl eventually told school officials what was going on. Police traced the calls to Garcia and he was arrested.
Prosecutors tried to establish his intent by calling two witnesses to testify about a previous case in which Garcia was convicted of similar charges in 1996. A 15-year-old girl testified she had sex with Garcia after meeting him over a pay phone, and her sister, 14, testified Garcia tried to get her out of school to have sex with her.
Garcia was on parole for those convictions when he was arrested.